BBC2's Top Gear has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance. A 21-year-old programme presented by three middle-aged blokes, it returned for a new series with more than 6 million viewers last month. Could you imagine it without presenter James May? Definitely. His colleague Richard Hammond? Probably. But Jeremy Clarkson? Not a chance.

Clarkson's appeal is almost as wide as his waistline, spanning television, newspapers - he has columns in the Sun and the Sunday Times - best-selling books and copious amounts of DVDs.

Jeremy Clarkson. Photograph: Martin Godwin Martin Godwin/Guardian
He also fronts documentaries for BBC2 and spoke at this year's Hay literary festival. His topic? Cars and comedy, two things he knows a lot about.

The Top Gear man is powerful enough to speak his mind about the BBC without fear of a comeback, criticising health and safety rules or publicly ruling out a switch of the show from BBC2 to BBC1.

"Categorically not. No. Over my dead body," he told reporters at an awards ceremony last year about moving the show. What Clarkson says, goes.

He has also been richly rewarded for the show's success, with a deal that is understood to include a return on some of the franchise's commercial activities. So much so that May and Hammond have demanded a contract more in line with the deal negotiated by their co-host.

Top Gear has been collecting awards by the car boot full, including an International Emmy, a Broadcasting Press Guild prize and National Television Awards for two years running.

The BBC2 show has 150 million viewers worldwide and is big in eastern Europe - Clarkson is a star on Russian TV and a best-selling author in Poland. And it has been licensed to a US network, NBC, for the first time, part of a plan to roll out local versions of the show around the globe.

Famously politically incorrect, Clarkson is not to everyone's taste, referring to co-host Hammond as a "bit mental" after his high speed crash, and describing a car he didn't like as a "bit gay". He also landed in hot water after appearing to flout the smoking ban in the studio, as well as drinking a gin and tonic at the wheel of a truck in the Arctic.

But the BBC2 show never takes itself too seriously and neither, it appears, does Clarkson, who came fourth in a poll of Britain's greatest wits last year.

Clarkson printed his bank details in the Sunday Times to prove that worries about identity theft were a "storm in a teacup". He later revealed that his details had been used to set up a £500 direct debit payable from his account to the British Diabetic Association.

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